Our guest today is Tiffany Smith. Tiffany is an interdisciplinary artist from the Caribbean diaspora working in photography, video, installation, and assemblage. In this episode we talk about Tiffany’s upbringing in the Bahamas and Miami, her long and winding journey to photography, how to advocate for yourself, how to escape the hustle and find a place that is right for you, and the complex dynamics of Black Caribbean identity in the U.S.
Guest Bio:
Tiffany Smith (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from the Caribbean diaspora working in photography, video, installation, assemblage, and design to define spaces and experiences that examine the roles of visitor and native and parse the definition of home. Using plant matter, design elements, pattern, and costume as cultural signifiers, Smith creates environments that are informed by the histories of representation, diasporic identity, and liminality.
Smith’s work examines individual narratives pulled from an array of multi-cultural influences and derived from her upbringing in Miami, Nassau, and Jamaica. Searching for new perspectives on dominant historical narratives, she studies how communities of people of color are formed and defined; in particular, how they are identified and represented, and how they persist.
Smith earned her B.F.A. in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and her M.FA. in Photo/Video from School of Visual Arts. Her work lives in various private and public collections, and has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Bronx Museum of Arts, NY; The Wassaic Project, NY; Recess Assembly, Brooklyn, NY; and Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA. She has also exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, MassArt, and the National Gallery of Jamaica. Smith is a former NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist Fellow, a Bronx A.I.M. Fellow, an EnFoco Photography Fellowship Awardee, a Cameron Visiting Artist at Middlebury College, and a resident artist at TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image in Philadelphia. She currently resides in New Orleans, LA.
Show Notes:
Tiffany’s Work:
Other References:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
Our guest today is Shyaporn Theerakulstit, a Thai-American born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and based in New York City. He is a man of many labels: actor, writer, director, new media creator, martial artist, cosplayer and fake science lecturer. We tried to tell him we think he is cool, but he prefers to call himself “relentlessly interesting.”
We talk about his various acting roles, especially his work in Star Trek productions, and how casting in Hollywood has changed (or hasn’t) over the years. We also discuss his early success on YouTube with his character videos, such as his “fake scientist” persona. And we discover that we all share a love of martial arts and think everyone should get out and “touch grass” or rather, “touch gloves.”
Guest Bio:
Shyaporn Theerakulstit is a Thai-American actor, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, based in New York City. He is also a writer, director, new media creator, martial artist, cosplayer and fake science lecturer. He has given talks on Godzilla biology and the technology of Star Trek vs Star Wars at TEDx, Nerd Nite, C2E2 and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the host of Atlas Obscura’s “REAL/fake Science” lecture series. His Youtube channel has over 5 million video views and has been featured on Huffington Post and Comedy Central. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and a degree holder in traditional Shaolin kung fu with Alan Lee’s Chinese Kung Fu Wu Su Association, one of the oldest martial arts schools in New York City.
Show Notes:
Shyaporn’s Acting Work:
Comedy Performances/Events:
Shyaporn’s YouTube channel:
Other references:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
When we spoke to Bela she was on a summer break from teaching at the University of Iowa, and was visiting family in the Chicagoland suburbs. She had just returned from an epic trip to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the Greek island of Gavdos.
In this episode, we talk about the perks and perils of illegibility within a dominant culture–both as an artist and as a Soviet Jewish immigrant, the diversity Bela witnessed in Kazakhstan, teaching in Iowa, and how the naked body can be its own site of acculturation.
Guest Bio:
Bela Shayevich is a Soviet-American writer, translator, and visual artist. She is best known for her translation of 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time. Her latest book is a translation of Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia, with Ilona Chavasse Yabzhin. She lives in Iowa City.
Show Notes:
Fictional Characters:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
In this episode we talk to Bonnie Han Jones, a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and educator working primarily with electronic sound and text. Her work explores noise, sonic identity, listening, and sound as knowledge.
We talked to Bonnie in spring 2025 when she was finishing up her PhD at Brown University. She has since moved to Chicago where she is now Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Art & Technology/Sound Practices Department.
In our conversation, we discuss Bonnie’s experiences as a Korean adoptee, her formative trip to Korea as a Fulbright Scholar, her relationship to sound and language as mediums of self-abstraction, and the generative (and often collaborative) art practices that can emerge from the space in-between.
Guest Bio:
Bonnie Han Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Chicago, IL.
Show Notes:
Listen to/buy Bonnie’s music at Catalytic Sound and Bandcamp
Upcoming Shows in Chicago, IL:
Works by Bonnie we reference:
Other references:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
In this episode we spoke with Joseph M. Pierce, a writer and professor at Stony Brook University, where he is the founding director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative. We talk about his new book, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair. Joseph is a citizen of the Cherokee nation and he shares his personal journey in relating to his heritage, from discovering his Cherokee roots later in life, to remembering Cherokee myths and teachings as tools to process some of the violence and dispossession his family has experienced.
Guest Bio:
Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature and the Founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University. He is the author of two books, Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair (Duke University Press, 2025). He co-edited Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of Gay and Lesbian Studies Quarterly, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable,” and has published work in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Art Journal, as well as in popular outlets such as Hyperallergic, TruthOut, and Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Wiradjuri) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds, and in 2024-2025 he was a Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Show Notes:
Buy your copy of Speculative Relations from Duke University Press
RSVP to the “Imagining Indigenous Futures” talk at MoMA, taking place on October 7th, 2025. This panel will also feature Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Simpson and curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation).
Indigenous collaborators Joseph mentions:
Critical black studies/critical fabulation connections Joseph mentions:
Pictures we talk about from the book:
Other references:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
Saki and Kirby reflect on what it feels like to release the first season of Hybridia. They also discuss future dreams for the show and make a humble plea to Keanu Reeves to become Hybridia's producer.
Credits:
Theme music by The Necklace, a project by Taylor Shields and Morgan Võ.
In this episode we spoke with writer Ahsan Butt. We discuss his hometown of Brampton, Ontario then versus now, living in the US as a Muslim post 9/11, watching horror movies to process grief, the feeling of being watched, and how being an outsider can be a superpower – especially as an artist. Ahsan is currently working on a collection of short stories (some of which we link to in our show notes below) and we also link to his website, where you could sign up for his private classes and editing services.
Guest Bio:
Ahsan Butt was born in Toronto, is of Pakistani descent, and currently lives in Evanston, IL. His short-fiction and essays have appeared in Pleiades, West Branch, Split Lip Magazine, Barrelhouse, The Massachusetts Review, The Normal School, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is currently a Senior Editor at South Asian Avant Garde: A Dissident Literary Anthology (SAAG) and writes a newsletter on horror writing.
Show Notes:
Find Ahsan online here:
Links to some of Ahsan’s work:
Links to some media we mention:
Credits:
Sound Credits:
In this episode we spoke with Nigerian British filmmaker Ayo Akingbade, who was visiting Los Angeles for a screening of her film “Keep Looking.” We discussed several of her films, including her experience shooting on location in Lagos, Nigeria, after which we compared how it feels to visit our relatives in their respective home countries. We also spoke about nepotism in the film industry, how people usually assume a character is autobiographical when there are any similarities to the author, how to be inspired to make new work, and thinking about timelessness in certain works of art.
Guest Bio:
Ayo Akingbade (born 1994) is an artist, writer and film director. She has directed nineteen short films. Her short films explore the mundanity of urban life in full swing in London's inner-city boroughs and industrial life in her family's hometown in Nigeria.
Show notes:
Links to where Ayo has screened:
Links to Ayo’s work:
Books Ayo mentions from Skylight Books in LA:
We also mention:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org:
In this episode, we spoke with Colombian-American artist, Catalina Alvarez, who visited Saki at her apartment for this interview. Catalina’s first language is Spanish and we talk about her choice to continue speaking her mother tongue with her child. We discuss the advantages of not knowing the prevalent language of a city, how bodies move through space differently depending on the cultural norms of a specific place, and Catalina reads an excerpt from her short story, “The Word.”
Guest Bio:
Catalina makes choreographed films and experimental musicals. Her films have screened at festivals including Slamdance, Fantastic Fest, New Orleans and Palm Springs, and venues such as the ICA Philadelphia, the San Diego Art Institute and the Museum of the Moving Image. She is a recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Flaherty Seminar, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Rooftop Films, Flux Factory and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Catalina grew up in a bilingual (Spanish and English) household. Since 2022, she has taught in the Visual Arts program at Fordham University, where she is head of Art & Engagement.
Show notes:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org:
Palm Trees in the Wind.wav by StrangeAcoustics -- https://freesound.org/s/346106/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Cumbia by Tomentum+ -- https://freesound.org/s/663170/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Small Caribbean Ocean Waves by fran_marenco -- https://freesound.org/s/796618/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Sparkly.wav by opticaillusions -- https://freesound.org/s/554312/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
In this episode, we spoke with Colombian-American comedian, performance artist, writer, and filmmaker Kat Toledo. We talk about Kat’s experience in alt-comedy and how many of her characters are hybrid entities, like the girl who’s trapped in a duvet cover or Tia Luz, who’s inspired by her Colombian aunties. We also discuss the mystery of her parentage, how she defines her identity without knowing who her biological father is, and also coming to terms with not knowing.
Guest Bio:
Kat Toledo is a Colombian-American comedian, performance artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has been featured on Funny or Die, The Best Show, opened for Eric André, and has performed with artists Kembra Pfahler, Laura Lima, and Kevin Mcdonald from Kids in the Hall.
Show notes:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org:
In this episode we spoke with Salvadoran-American writer Darrow Farr, also known as Darri, who was visiting New York and stopped by my apartment for the interview. We talk with Darri about reconnecting with her biological father later in life, what it’s like to date white partners, how and where we gain access to our heritage, and how we’d like to raise children with exposure to these cultures.
Guest Bio:
Darrow Farr is a Salvadoran-American writer. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 2017-2019 and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The Michener Center at the University of Texas. The Bombshell is her debut novel. She was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband and son.
Show notes:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org:
Digging with shovel.m4a by guyburns -- https://freesound.org/s/558413/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Footseps on Sand.wav by 21100206TM -- https://freesound.org/s/594484/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
Watering with a Watering Can.mp3 by Bricklover -- https://freesound.org/s/532890/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
In this episode we spoke with Vietnamese-American artist and writer Morgan Võ, who generously agreed to be our first guest. We met Morgan while studying art at the Cooper Union and discuss growing up in our respective suburbs, the significance of names, the challenges of seeking information from our immigrant parents, and “the yearning.” We also discuss a short essay by Kimberly Alidio called “My Native Language is Noise,” which we link to below.
Guest Bio:
Morgan Võ (b. 1989) is a poet and librarian concerned with resonance, contingency, difficulty understanding, and the presence of the dead among the living. He is the author of The Selkie (The Song Cave, 2024) and the chapbooks Lights of Earth (2019) and Eat Pamphlet (2014). His poems were anthologized in Pathetic Literature, edited by Eileen Myles, and have most recently appeared in Changes Review and Footnotes. He organized G-L-O-S-S, a mutual aid-based poetry press, from 2020-21, and is a current member of the Poetry Project Newsletter editorial collective. Originally from coastal Virginia, he lives now in Bedstuy, Brooklyn.
Show notes:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org:
In this episode we talk about the confusions and joys of being biracial. We introduce ourselves by talking about our basic history, why we wanted to start this podcast, and our Asian parents’ love of gatekeeper sports like tennis and sailing. Join us on our first foray into the world of Hybridia!
Show notes:
Credits:
Sound effects courtesy of freesound.org: